It's the weekend at the Nana Plaza, Bangkok's notorious fleshpot where girls can be picked up for the price of a bottle of Johny Walker Black . This three story mezzanine complex starts to fill up with barflies from around the world. Inside the bars - with names like Voodoo and Rainbow - the dancers are putting on their make-up and bikinis oblivious to the catcalls of punters sitting on stools, some with paunches that have downed more beers than the local Shingha brewery.
"Check that one out with the Pamela Anderson knockers," says one red eyed middle aged English man in an East Ender accent.
"She's a katoey(ladyboy)," replies Christopher G Moore, demurely taking another sip from his expresso.
The forty-something Bangkok-based novelist soberly takes in the scene with the nonchalance of a silent voyeur as the goggle-eyed Caucasians leer at the writhing flesh around chrome poles on a stage surrounded by mirrors.
This scenario isn't surprising; the Canadian expatriate has explored the seedy underbelly of southeast Asia in 12 novels. His earthy prose narrates the dark side of Cambodia, Thailand and Vietname through the eyes of private eye Calvino.
Moore has a penchant for marketing with inventive gimmicks. On the toilet walls of go-go bars owned by the King's Group, a large Thai company that runs many of the bars in the Nana complex, are posters advertising Moore's books. Punters can buy a signed copy of his books over the counter with a round of beers. For last Valentine's Day he wrapped up a thousand copies of Heart Talk in a red ribbon with a plastic heart attached to it saying 'Happy Valentine's Day' Like his other books, autographed copies of Heart Talk are on sale at the bars of Nana. And for Christmas and New Year he was flogging off 'Calvino'
coffee mugs' for his fans.
The front cover of his latest novel Cold Hit released in November has a photograph of the Thermae coffee shop, an institutional expatiate bar on Bangkok's main drag, Sukhumvit. Known as 'headquarters' in Moore's novels, this meat market for expatriates has provided the inspiration behind the creation of many of his characters. He once called Thermae the "cross roads", where he met diplomats, business executives, English-language teachers,
adventurers, drunks and con-artists and those living on the margins of Bangkok's nightlife who converged there for late night drinking sessions.
Another inspirational den of iniquity is the notorious Nana Plaza red-light complex on Sukhumvit soi 4, " a two car-wide esophagus leading into a U-shaped gut that had swallowed more than it couldÉ three stories of esoteric possibilities" writes Moore in Cold Hit.
This go-go bars features in the six novels of the Calvino
private-eye series, of which Cold Hit is the latest. The protagonist is a half-Jewish, half-Italian Mekong whisky-swigging detective from the Big Apple, who untangles hard-boiled cases in the tradition of Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe.
Much of what he is writing is based on reality he says. "The precise circumstances where events are played out are made up, but the core of the experiences are real. One reason why the books have been a success is the characters are a mirror
that allows others to recognize aspects of their own
life." Or maybe his own?
And his catch phrases recount the classic features of the surreal expat life in Bangkok: "short-time hotels" (hotels where sexual transactions take place), 'the sickness' (men addicted to the-sex-on-tap lifestyle), and 'the packaged falange' (foreigners working in Bangkok for multi-nationals on high salaries).
Local writer Bernhard Trink who writes about the Realm in the Bangkok Post says that Moore has fully explored the detective genre with the exotic sleazy East as a backdrops for his novels. He deals insightfully with the foreign Diaspora that came to Thailand because they had trouble getting laid back home.
And at times it seems the author is more concerned exposing the moral vacuum of Bangkok, than private-eye Calvino is in solving cases for a financial pittance. Rather than a deep revelation on the psyche of mainstream Thais, Moore focuses largely on the microcosm of the red-light realm.
It is little wonder that Moore's largest following, almost verging on cult worship- the patrons of Bangkok's red light district- are the whore-mongers he writes about living on the fringes of Bangkok.
Moore's fan clubs is growing at his web site http://www.cgmoore.com. One letter from a Canadian gentleman in his 70's who divorced his wife and moved to Thailand to live with prostitute half his age wrote: "The reason why I'm writing to you is simply to say thank you for writing these kinds of books."
The forty-something Bangkok-based novelist soberly takes in the scene with the nonchalance of a silent voyeur as the goggle-eyed Caucasians leer at the writhing flesh around chrome poles on a stage surrounded by mirrors.
This scenario isn't surprising; the Canadian expatriate has explored the seedy underbelly of southeast Asia in 12 novels. His earthy prose narrates the dark side of Cambodia, Thailand and Vietname through the eyes of private eye Calvino. 
This go-go bars features in the six novels of the Calvino
private-eye series, of which Cold Hit is the latest. The protagonist is a half-Jewish, half-Italian Mekong whisky-swigging detective from the Big Apple, who untangles hard-boiled cases in the tradition of Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe. 
Local writer 
